by Veronica Sky
I trusted him. Part of that might have been the overwhelming attraction I felt in his presence. Every word of his Scottish-inflected baritone voice filled me with comfort. When his dark green eyes met mine, I had no reservations, no hesitations. He would meet me in that room with the tree. He would explain what the hell I was supposed to do next. Obviously, I wasn’t going to go back to life-as-usual. I finally realized how oblivious I had been, thinking I somehow could.
With all the recent betrayals, I needed someone I could rely on. Trent, my father, and all the superficial relationships in my life weren’t going to cut it. Therefore, it reassured me when I finally walked into another circular room that looked like it had a tree. That part had been true.
By “tree” he had meant a huge metal sculpture. A huge trunk the width of a car rose up towards the sky-high ceiling, branches of wrought silver extending to either side of the narrow room. I was certain I had been underground, but it looked like the procession of corridors had led me gradually towards higher elevation. A single beam of artificially white light illuminated the sculptural tree from above and cast scattered light on the engraving directly below it: overlapping stars, pentagons, and circles with symbols at the intersections.
I walked around the base of the tree, marveling at the workmanship. The whole thing, including the trunk, looked like solid crafted silver. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the cost, not to mention the labor of shaping and texturing so much metal to such a degree of realism. I ran my hands over the cracks and recesses of the styled bark surface and noticed there were recessed foot holes running up the length of the trunk and an endless maze of incredibly thin cuts across the entire surface, like it was made up of puzzle pieces. Looking up, I saw there were level edges running across the largest branches like pathways. But to where? The rounded walls of the room rose past the tallest branch without so much as an indentation.
The only way out was the way I had come in. Which didn’t make sense, if Mr. Donovan wanted to meet me here. Maybe it was just a hideout until things blew over and he could sneak me out.
It made sense to occupy myself while I was waiting, so I took off my heels and climbed up the trunk of the tree. The metal wasn’t too slippery given the antiquated, roughened texture. At the top of the trunk, the branches started splitting off, and I walked along the first one. Towards the end, I noticed something shiny catching the light. An emerald the size of a fist was recessed into the metal, a small hole on the other side allowing the focused light to pass through. There were thirteen indentations total, with only three emeralds covering the first three.
Making my way to the second, then the third branches, I encountered the same thing: thirteen indentations. The second branch had a single emerald and the third branch had eight. Is this what Mr. Donovan meant by puzzle?
Looking up to the top, I counted seven main branches (they split off into smaller offshoots but only after the panel with the indentations). They seemed to be arranged randomly. Maybe just a naturalistic approach by the sculptors? Then again, nothing was random with Alpha Omega. They found some esoteric meaning in everything.
I explored the top branches and found the top branch had five emeralds, another thirteen, and an additional branch with just a single transparent stone. Obviously there was some kind of pattern here. Seven branches, seven of those old perverts or elders…
Wait! I thought back to math class earlier today, Mr. Franz, that whole golden ratio plant thing. I was glad I didn’t skip class today. I guess everything has a purpose. Those plant stems grew 137.5° apart. I had no idea what exactly 137.5° was, but I knew that three stems would grow slightly outside of a full rotation around the plant. So, moving up the trunk of the tree in a spiral, I counted the branches, and sure enough the third sprouted at a little more than a full 360° degrees around. Maybe this was all related, like that sequence Mr. Franz said related to the golden ratio in plants. Yes. All those numbers seemed to fit.
I followed the middle branch I was standing on to the panel of indentations and emeralds: two out of thirteen. I counted up the number of stones by branch: 3, 1, 8, 2, 1, 13, 5—all Fibonacci numbers, though not in order. Maybe I was supposed to put it in the right sequence?
I started rearranging the stones, distributing them correctly, every subsequent branch getting the sum of the emeralds in the last two. Finally, exhausted from schlepping the huge gems up and down the tree, I gratefully plopped the last of the 13 stones on the top branch panel.
Immediately, a groaning sound shook the room. The branch I was standing on began to turn. Looking down, I could see the tree was spinning slowly, the play of light on the floor engraving changing each and every second. I was moving closer towards the upper wall. The stone in the area I was approaching began to open. I could see now that there was in fact a recess in what had appeared seamless rock from below. A stone covering on the inside of the wall rolled in synch with the rotation of the huge tree, revealing a circular portal.
I prepared to make the jump, which I hoped was more of a long step, at the exact moment the upper branch and exit aligned. I couldn’t be sure the tree would stop moving, and as I lunged into the oversized porthole, I quickly realized I had been right. The massive sculpture not only kept rotating, but the branches shifted position along the jigsaw lines I had noted earlier. The silver metal tree was some sort of monumental mechanical marvel, rearranging itself until the light cast another key pattern upon the engraving and the puzzle reset.
As I meandered up the dark corridor, I got the feeling I was traveling upwards along a large spiral. I couldn’t be sure. Given how dark it was, I just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Hopefully, the corridor wouldn’t lead to another puzzle room of some sort. I couldn’t be sure how much time I had before Alpha Omega realized their sex slave had escaped.
Luckily the dim passageway emptied into a large hallway with high ceilings, much like the one I processed through to the atrium just a few hours ago. The windows were similarly high with the upper lights of skyscrapers visible. At least I was above ground.
Footsteps. I turned around in panic, but saw no one. They must be in pursuit by now. I picked up the pace, running as fast as I could in a robe three sizes too big for me, my high heels swinging in my right hand—I could always use them as a weapon. Ahead of me loomed a gothic archway. I veered right and found myself in front of a huge door with a heavy iron handle. I could feel the draft of night air under the door. All that stood between the outside world and me was this heavy, oversized—
The footsteps behind me grew louder. I tried the handle. Locked. I shook the door, the handle, everything. I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Jane.”
“Where the hell were you?”
“I was delayed.”
“Mr. Donovan, I just want to go home—“
“It’s James. Please. Here, your clothes.” He threw me my skirt and white blouse.
He turned around as I pulled off the robe and slipped into my school clothes, as if what transpired in the atrium in no way lessened the demands of old school modesty. I buttoned my blouse over my breasts and stole a glance at Mr. Donovan…James—I’d have to get used to that—when he turned around again. I’d never seen him in casual clothes, didn’t even think he knew what those were. He was always in either a suit or formal golf attire at the outings. He looked fantastic though: dark rinse jeans, brown suede Chelsea boots, and a light, textured grey cashmere sweater (it looked impeccably soft and expensive).
“Jane, I have to go. They don’t know you’re missing yet so you’ll be safe at home for now.”
“Where do they think I am?”
“They’re moving the main operations to London for the time being; you’re on you’re way there,” James informed me in his Scottish inflected baritone voice. The hint of an accent in his intonation, dark and proud, was sensual and comforting.
“What do I do?”
“There’s a back Audi A8 waiting for you two blocks straight ahead, on the left side street. It will take you home.”
“Where are you going?” Suddenly, I was all questions.
“They have your dad Jane. I want to make sure nothing happens to you. The distraction—”
“The photographers, journalists?”
“Right. Your Aunt Sophie and I arranged it. There’s a resistance, Jane: the Descendants of Ishtar. We’re working to dismantle the Society. You’re family is important; despite your father’s choices, I want to get you all somewhere safe.”
“My mother…”
“She has nothing to do with this; and, despite the…particularity of their rituals, Alpha Omega follows their own rules to the T. She doesn’t know, she cannot be harmed.”
I hesitated. “And, what about your wife? Aren’t you worried, with all of this—”
“Jane,” he interrupted, “that’s not real. Alpha Omega installed her as cover: the managing director is not allowed to take a wife. Even my son and daughter are not mine.”
Somehow that made me feel closer to him. Earlier this evening, I had concluded that my attraction bordered on juvenile and naïve; but now I let it grow, acknowledging that hardly anything was out of line in the topsy-turvy reality I had just tonight become aware of.
“You should go. Jane.” He said my name after a pause, as if he had something else on his mind, but no words followed.
I turned to the door. He reached to my side, grazing my chest through the thin material of my blouse. With the key in his hand, he let me out into the brisk air. I turned back around to face his intense green eyes, closer than I’d ever been to them.
“James, “ I managed to spit out, “be careful…”
“Right then,” he said with a charmingly embarrassed smile, and promptly hurried back down the hallway.
I quickly found the parked car, sank into the warm, luxurious seats, and napped the entire ride back to Silvershore.
“Miss…Miss we’re here.”
The driver woke me and I stumbled upstairs and into the shower fully dressed, turning the water on so hot it steamed the entire bathroom. I left my clothes and underwear in the shower, wrapped myself tight in my bathrobe and collapsed onto my bed, thankfully falling at once into a deep sleep.
Beams of light focused through the emeralds in the silver branches, bearing down on me, hotter and hotter, a white expanse blanketing my vision until—
I woke up with the sun peering between the curtains and flitting across my eyelids. I was incredibly hungry. Still wearing only my bathrobe, I drifted down the stairs to the kitchen. Everything that happened yesterday felt like a dream: from the game to the party to the Alpha Omega cult—I couldn’t sort out what actually happened.
I poured myself some orange juice and cracked two eggs over the stove. So hungry. Turning to the granite countertop, I was surprised to find an envelope with a name written in exotic flourishes—my name. It was a long letter, from my Aunt Sophie:
Dearest Jane,
I heard that you were dragged into all of this, and had this letter delivered overnight from London. I hope you do not mind: given the circumstances, I had someone watch the house overnight. I hope that James is able to get both you and your father out of the country, and that you will soon be with me here in London.
My brother was always ambitious: he always said he would one day be rich and significant. We didn’t come from much: a couple of orphans from Hackney, East London. He moved to the States for college, hoping to make it big on Wall Street like in the cinema films. He quickly realized that the most assured way of doing that was to join the Society, and took the offer to join despite the cost.
You do not remember, but you were at that complex on Madison Avenue, as a child not even one years old, pledged by your father in ritual as assurance of his commitments to the Society—
That would explain the dream. I’d pulled up details from my subconscious and blended that with…well, my feelings for James Donovan.
—I am sorry for what happened to you. James informed me that the intervention we planned did not occur soon enough. We were both powerless to do more. I had hoped you would never need to know about any of this, that Kevin would keep performing as meticulously and carefully as he always had, and the Society would never have any reason to make you aware. But now that you are, there is a great deal more you need to know.
I became aware of Alpha Omega when my curiosity got the better of me, shortly after your birth. Kevin was a rising star in finance; rising too quickly, I thought. I was working for the CPS in England, and used my contacts to investigate a number of things I unearthed, digging through your father’s documents and putting a tail on him—I did tell you I was curious.
The Descendants of Ishtar caught wind of my exploration. I’ve been working in the organization ever since: a private investigator by day, and the proverbial vigilante by night. What I’ve learned and seen establishes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Alpha Omega is the single greatest threat to the freedom and autonomy of every single person on the planet.
The Society has its roots in the Russian Steppes around the 5th millennium BCE. Both the Descendants of Ishtar and Alpha Omega safeguard the history, though modern, academic scholarship still struggles with the subject of early human migration in the region. Before this time, humanity was organized in small tribes, worshipping a plethora of mother-goddesses, each different from home to home, from one group to the next. This was before humanity understood the secrets of its own fecundity. It was before coitus was directly associated with childbirth. Sex was one thing, a human pleasure. And reproduction was another: the singular creative gift of the female. Women took the name of their mother’s tribe or clan, did not mate for life with a single male sexual partner, and the mother and her kin were the focus of the family structure and human society at large.
The goddesses worshipped by the earliest humans were not simply the female versions of later patriarchal, transcendent beings. They did not reside in shrines or temples, or have a single identity and meaning throughout an entire clan. They were personal, domestic goddesses, worshipped in the home. They were not symbols of fertility, but rather celebrations of the myriad functions of the human body and its unity with nature.
This ancient society was not matriarchal. Mothers of clans ruled together with men and elders. The Neolithic goddess figures represented every phase of life, death, and regeneration. Beside those were figures of men, though not as many, in peaceful poses, never exhibiting warfare, violence, or domination. Life and death, the cycle of nature, were deeply entrenched in an all-pervasive religion. But as the surviving artwork corroborates, there was no warfare, heroes, torture, elaborate burials, or afterlife. The ubiquitous joy of living extinguished the fear of death.
Then, some inquisitive men began proclaiming the discovery of the link between the sexual and reproductive. It was the birth of the Society. Suddenly, the ability to establish paternity led to jealousy and the desire to control women’s reproductive behavior. The Society advocated the recording of paternity, and patrilineal structures began to grow throughout early culture.
As creativity was expended on fashioning weapons and higher value was given to the power to take life than the power to give it, a large group of the early settlement migrated west. They arrived in Mesopotamia, peacefully merging with the ancient Assyrians to form early Sumerian settlements, which emphasized farming and the agricultural cycle of birth, death, and regeneration.
Meanwhile, back in the Pontic-Caspian Steppes, Alpha Omega took control of civilization, from the ordering of religion to the political control of militant spiritual leaders and priests, ruling in the name of the equally violent gods they created. They stock bred animals, split into social
ly stratified herding units, using up the land for grazing, and moving on over vast areas. Their ideology exalted virile, heroic warrior gods who descended from the thunderous sky to subdue and order the natural world.
These Proto-Indo-Europeans, under the direction of Alpha Omega, tamed the horse and swept west throughout the 3rd millennium BCE. By 2200 BCE, the Gutian tribes had reached Mesopotamia. They swept down in force, destroying the Akkadian empire and plunging Sumer into a dark age. Southern Mesopotamia went into decline. Alpha Omega orchestrated the ordering of religion and deities to correspond with their thirst for power. They politicized spiritual practice with networks of temples and shrines, and began to develop ensuring structures of control to steer the lives of the masses.
That is why the resistance goes by the name of the Descendants of Ishtar. Ishtar was the last true goddess, the better-known Babylonian counterpart to the Sumerian deity Inanna—goddess of love, fertility, and warfare. Ishtar was equally complicated, contradictory, defying a simple label, and in no way merely a female version of a male god. She was a multi-dimensional expression of the pure and divine pleasure of being. Overtime, she was co-opted by Alpha Omega as well: placed into the pantheon of ordered gods as the representation of feminine love (Egyptian Hathor) and feminine pleasure and beauty (Aphrodite and Venus).
Alpha Omega’s tools may have shifted in the modern age from religious and political control to economic influence, but they are stronger than ever. Using their immense influence, they relentlessly push humankind to the brink of totalitarianism and the eradication of natural instincts. They are obsessed with sex, but seek to control, order, and ritualize it. They seek to manufacture the individual, fetishize the systems that order our lives, and find some harmony with their gnostic, sacred knowledge by removing the human spirit from the equation.
